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Could You Be An Energy Mogul? Find Out By Playing Maersk Oil's Online Game--Which The Company's Own CEO Lost At

Could a computer game available for free online in which you simulate running a whole big oil company be an effective tool for training and recruiting candidates for executive positions in energy companies?

Danish shipping and logistics giant Maersk seems to think so. Earlier today the company released internet game Quest for Oil, a “Subsurface Gaming Experience” that challenges players to tasks like correctly identifying potential reservoirs and positioning drilling equipment to produce the greatest possible volume of oil before a digital opponent does so.

According to Maersk, Quest for Oil is the first game of its kind. Focused on strategy, the game introduces players to a remote corner of the industrial world accompanied by English-accented narration. Choppers tick away overhead, drilling apparatuses rise above the waves, and oil lies locked beneath geothermal maps of the ocean floor, where only the most skilled can find it.

The game is currently available in English, but Thomasen says that following its release this morning the company received a request for a Norwegian translation. Maersk invested approximately 2.4 million kroner–about $425,000–in developing Quest for Oil.

The CEO, who describes himself as a competitive, played the game and found it “inspiring.”

He also lost.

The target audience for—and ultimate objective of—Quest for Oil remains vague. According to Thomasen, Maersk is hoping the game will become popular among school children and university students. While Maersk offers a professional development program for university graduates and a company statement boldly proclaims “We have jobs for all of you” and promises “growth as far as the eye can see,” there is no process for recruiting directly among high scorers, and the game will not be used as a formal recruitment tool.

Rather, Thomasen said, the company is hoping Quest for Oil will encourage interest both professional and general in the energy industry.

“We have a very broad audience but of course we hope to attract young people to the industry.”

There is also the sense that Maersk is seeking to elicit some empathy for an industry accustomed to scorching public scrutiny. A company statement says that releasing the game is an “effort to improve transparency in the industry and recruit new talent” and that the game “allows players to experience first-hand the stresses and strains of successfully managing an oil company.”

“We hope that we can reach the many people that take oil and gas for granted,” said Thomasen, citing the example of someone filling their gas tank or buying plastic kitchenware without understanding the industrial origins of such products.

Whether digitally identifying reservoirs and drilling for 2,500,000 barrels of oil in Qatar before an opponent will raise the adrenaline of gamers accustomed to hijacking virtual cars or the awareness of those mindlessly filling their tanks remains to be seen.

Currently, of the twenty highest scoring players, ten are participating under male names and one under a female name (the rest are playing anonymously.)

Once thought responsible for violent behavior among children, online and video games have benefitted from reconsideration in recent years. Physicians have proposed that digital games could help dyslexic children learn to read, links have been made to improved cognitive performance among those who play games regularly, and organizations from medical schools to the U.S. military have introduced digital games as training tools.

Thomasen says that university students shown the game as part of a trial responded with interest, and that several approached him to ask about pursuing careers in energy they had not considered previously.

“You can learn something about the basics [from Quest for Oil] but obviously you can’t learn it all,” said Thomasen. “The idea is to stimulate the interest and say, ‘Wow this is something I want to try.’”

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